


Night Drive

by aurilly



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-08
Updated: 2009-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened after Tracy picked up Mohinder outside of Pinehurst at the end of 3.13.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Drive

"Need a ride?" Tracy called through the rolled-down window.

Mohinder got in with a sigh of relief that was due more to the disappearance of his scales than to this unexpected convenience. However, it was a change he could get used to; Mohinder's harrowing adventures usually ended less stylishly than with a red Mercedes and a hot blonde.

"Thanks. I'm glad to see you safe and sound," he said as he buckled up. And he meant it.

Tracy restarted the car. "I was already on my way out when stuff started to go up in flames."

Although it fit in with her current mysteriously unhurried demeanor, this struck Mohinder as odd. "You were leaving? But why? You and Nathan…" Mohinder began, but Tracy's dark scowl gave him the answer before he'd finished formulating the question.

"What a disappointment _he_ turned out to be. Now I see where his mother was coming from with him." She collected herself. "Anyway, moving on. I missed most of the action. What happened back there?"

Mohinder briefly recapped events: how Flint had set the place ablaze, how Peter had injected himself with what remained of the formula to fly himself out of the building with Nathan in tow, how Mohinder himself had run blindly for the exit just in time. "The handle of the emergency door was almost too hot to touch. When I was trying to open it, I thought to myself that I could really use you." He meant the remark as a gesture of companionship, but she brushed it aside.

"Why didn't you just jump… or fly… or whatever it is you do?" she asked bluntly.

Mohinder froze, struck by the thought. "Oh! I don't know why I didn't think of it. Maybe it's because of the formula I used and its side effects, or maybe it's because they're so new, but using my abilities doesn't yet come instinctually. Well, no matter. I made it out and now here you are, a most welcome sight."

This time she responded to his gallantry. "Glad to be of service." Tracy shrugged amiably, and then after a quick glance added, "Speaking of welcome sights, your little dermatological problem seems to have cleared up. How'd that happen?"

Mohinder spoke slowly, still working out the facts for himself. "When Peter overturned the vats with the formula, I became soaked in it. It must possess some sort of healing ability that I didn't have a chance to test for. Sadly, it's too late for that now, but I'm grateful for the miracle fix."

"You and me both. It was one thing working with you in the lab, but I've got to say, I hesitated about letting bug man into my car." She took another quick glance over at him. "You're a really lucky guy."

"I've been finding that I'm generally lucky," Mohinder mused, thinking over the events of the past year. "So, where are we going?" he asked, changing the subject.

"I was just about to get to that. We aren't on the highway yet, so we can still decide, north of south. I was either going to drop you off at home in the city and invite myself to crash with you so I'm not driving all night, or else…" Tracy took a deep breath, and Mohinder could tell that she was about to make the proposition that truly interested her. Her right eye, the only one he could see from his position glinted with naked ambition. "Or else you could come back down to DC with me. With Pinehurst burning and Primatech probably no longer interested in you, it seems that you're out of work. A genius like you should be doing big things."

"And you'd like to be included, I assume?" he asked.

"Something like that. We could work together and do something that will really make a difference. Pinehurst was just one route. We have the whole world ahead of us."

As a way of stalling for time so he could think, Mohinder teased her. "That's quite a choice you're asking me to make. And yet ultimately, it sounds like a long-winded way of asking me 'your place or mine'?"

Tracy laughed. "Yeah, I guess so. Is that a problem for you?" she challenged playfully.

Mohinder let the sexual innuendo he himself had introduced into the conversation float by. He was thinking of Molly, safely in India no matter what he decided to do next. He was a free agent and Tracy's offer was attractive. She had proven herself a capable partner and a keen intellect, who also possessed the social acumen he was sometimes forced to admit he lacked. Together, as a team, they might be able to effect the kind of useful action he had craved to achieve for so long. Plus, he found himself drawn to her, for reasons he knew were dangerously illogical. In addition to the misplaced affection he was projecting onto her. Mohinder attempted to remind himself that he shouldn't trust her further than he could throw her. However, he told himself, she wasn't very heavy; he could probably throw her very far. He could handle her.

"No, not at all," he finally answered. "Let's go to DC. The only tie I have to anyone in New York is a flat mate who I doubt will miss me. Most of the things in my apartment aren't even mine."

"And the job?" she pressed, staying on task.

"Let's talk about it in the morning," Mohinder replied, still evasive. "I think we've been through more than enough for one night."

"I'm not going to let you off the hook that easily, you know. I'll be just as insistent tomorrow."

"I'm aware," he sighed. "I'll have you know, however, that I'm not quite the person you think I am. You might not be as keen to have me on board as you think you are."

Tracy's hackles went up. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Recently, I've been making decisions that I wouldn't normally make. I'm not sure why I did any of the things I did all week. Including in my lab with you and---"

"Water under the bridge. I don't want to talk about it."

"I wasn't going to actually---"

"I know. I saw it in your face, but still did what I needed to do. I said I don't want to talk about that day."

"Ok." Mohinder squirmed uncomfortably, whishing she'd let him just apologize. "I think it was related to the faulty serum. But now that my skin is better…"

"Well, you know what they say. What the Lord giveth, he can also take away," Tracy quoted clinically.

Mohinder rubbed his newly healed face again and fell into a contemplative reverie. "Yes," he murmured.

Tracy glanced at him in understanding. "Yeah, as I said, whether or not it's a habit, you got lucky, pretty boy. It's good that that Roger Rabbit dip fell on you. I can get why you'd be interested in having powers, but something tells me that that gorgeous face of yours has done and will do more for you over the years than any special ability ever will."

Unwilling to acknowledge or even think about the possible veracity of this observation, which would undermine all of the (albeit faulty) logic of his recent actions, Mohinder threw the comment right back at her. Here was a rare pop-culture reference he actually understood. "I suppose you would know something about the usefulness of good looks, _Jessica_," he said, his eyes wandering downwards to take in her tight red dress. She flashed a smile at him.

"Maybe," she confessed.

Mohinder's mind was still on her previous comment. "I must say, you didn't strike me as the religious type," he said.

Tracy's knuckles turned white as her fingers squeezed the wheel even more tightly. "I'm not. But I am nothing if not cautious. Therefore, just in case, I always make sure not to take anything that seems heaven-sent," she stated through gritted teeth.

"What do you mean?" Mohinder could see that she was getting upset about something.

"I don't trust things that seem too good to be true. Like my ability. And like yours, actually. What you and I have isn't luck of birth. It's something someone did to us---you, Dr. Zimmerman, whoever; it doesn't matter. What matters is that it's something tangible, something with a rational cause. I flipped out when I thought I was one of them---some freak randomly born with this. Once I found out that it was something… synthetic, it was a lot easier to embrace." She paused, trembling in excitement to finally have the chance to share with someone her new pet theory, her new way of rationalizing what she was going through. "And you know what I think? I think that makes us even more powerful. Notice how Arthur never took my power, or Nathan's? Or yours? Maybe our kind can't be taken. That's why they were all so scared of the army we were going to create---Knox, Flint, Peter. Because we're not like them. We're better."

Mohinder listened, but found himself awestruck by the odd dichotomy of these familiar features uttering such fierce words. They were concepts that had flitted through his consciousness recently, but given that his psyche had been somewhat off, Mohinder wanted to wait until a quieter moment to ponder them fully---when he was sure that any and all adverse mental effects had disappeared. Mohinder watched her quietly as she spoke, marveling at the frigidity of her tone and body language, and wondering what traumas---obviously going back much further than anything that had happened to her this week---had hardened her so completely. Fascination mingled with a hint of pity.

Tracy noticed Mohinder's lack of reply and the way he was staring. "What?"

He mumbled, "Amazing… so alike, and yet so different."

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"You and Niki.," he replied.

"Oh, the sainted Niki," Tracy hissed in exasperation. Mohinder could see that he had touched a nerve. "What was it about her that has all of you carrying such a torch for her? From what I can tell, she was a non-entity, the epitome of a Madonna/whore. A single-mother stripper? Oh, come _on_."

"You find that unsavory?" Mohinder queried, trying to understand the woman whose vulnerabilities he thought he saw finally poking out from underneath her carefully constructed veneer of confidence---vulnerabilities that only strengthened the physical similarities that were striking him all over again.

"That kind of person is always a victim, always completely dependent on some man.

"Is power so all-important? What about family and---"

"This coming from the man who injected himself with an untested serum to get powers. You're one to talk."

Mohinder understood why she was saying this, but the unkind way in which she spoke about his friend caused him to want to rebuke her as harshly as he could. "Do you know what I think? I think your hostility towards her memory is a mask---something you're assuming to shield yourself from having to deal with the fact that you had a twin sister you never knew and will never know, and a nephew whose existence you aren't ready to accept. Because you're scared, terrified of what facing all this will mean for your hyper-controlled little life."

Tracy fumed but didn't say anything. They drove in silence for a few minutes. Mohinder started to regret his harsh words. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to---"

"Two sisters, actually. We were triplets," Tracy interrupted softly, still neither affirming nor denying Mohinder's hypothesis.

Mohinder remembered what Niki had told him, so long ago, about her disorder. "Oh right. Jessica."

"What? Who? Rabbit?" Tracy asked, somewhat nonsensically, thinking he was still making silly film analogies, which would have been in pretty poor taste at such a serious moment. Mohinder explained as well as he could what he meant. Tracy listened, her eyes intently on the road.

"Oh, a psycho. Even better," Tracy scoffed when he was done. Despite her efforts to take it in stride, Mohinder could see that she was shaken by this barrage of further information about her birth family. "A fourth one, huh? Dr. Zimmerman didn't mention her. He only told me about someone named Barbara. No idea who or where she is. We are legion, apparently."

Trying to lighten the mood, Mohinder remarked, "And probably more powerful than the army we almost created."

It worked. Tracy calmed down again. "Probably. Women are definitely the more dangerous of the species. There's a reason there were only men in that group. I didn't want to give up my edge."

Mohinder snorted. After that, there was another brief silence as they drove down the NJ Turnpike, a lone car in the midst of a sea of trucks.

Mohinder, still feeling defensive after the attacks on both himself and Niki brought the conversation back to Niki, who still pervaded his thoughts. "Niki was a good person, a loving mother, a steadfast friend. It's everyone's loss that you two never had a chance to cross paths."

The weight of the grief and sorrow in Mohinder's voice broke through Tracy's guard---the barricaded wall of ambition and self-interest she had been working so hard to sustain in the past few days---to the real person underneath. And even more startling, he felt like for the first time, she was seeing Mohinder. He was right; he was a different person from the man she's spent the past couple of days with. Tracy liked this one better. He'd be both harder and easier to work with; good guys were like that. "You really cared about her, didn't you?" she asked gently.

One look at his stricken face was answer enough.

"Nathan just screwed her once, but you actually---" she continued to prompt. "I saw how you were looking at me that day."

Mohinder felt a blush rising in the darkness and quickly corrected any possible misconceptions on Tracy's part. "It wasn't like that. It wasn't romantic."

"Oh." The relief in Tracy's voice surprised him. "Oh right, there was that woman… Maya. You were really---"

Mohinder cut her off brusquely. "No, that wasn't like that either."

Tracy laughed. "For such a good-looking guy, you've got a lot of 'not like that's' with a lot of women."

Mohinder shook his head and continued. "I was confused. I was enraged. I needed a purpose. Maya was someone who had been left on my doorstep by someone who had victimized her---the same person who has victimized me, ruined my life time and again. The person who robbed me of the chance to save your sister. I looked at Maya and saw in her a chance to make up for my weaknesses and for failing to save Niki. And when I continued to fail her, too, I… I don't know. I went to see her during the eclipse, but I walked away. I realized how much baggage I was projecting onto her for. I don't think I was ever…"

"I understand," Tracy comforted. And somehow, he could tell she really did. "Maybe that's why you got something like Niki's power."

Mohinder's face was now in his hands. He thought of cartoons, how satisfying it had been to hit hard and throw things far distances, just like Niki. So similar to the way he himself had been thrown when Niki herself had hit him. He remembered Elle's succinct remark. "No longer a punching bag," he murmured.

"But I thought your ability is gone. I mean, your face…"

Mohinder looked around him and thought. "If I do still have my abilities, anything I could do at this moment as a test would probably result in expensive repair work for your vehicle." Realizing how smug he sounded about his own (still hopefully present) powers, he apologetically added, "Destroying your very nice car after you so sweetly picked me up would be the height of ingratitude."

"Such a gentleman," she quipped, turning towards him so that he could see her rolling his eyes.

"I do try," he joked in return, and the joy he felt at being safe and whole again enough to joke like this caused a huge, happy grin to spread over his face. She gasped at something. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Uh… uh, yeah," she said. And blushed.

A truck horn blared and they both quickly faced forwards again. The car had been swerving into the next lane. The moment was broken. Mohinder shifted in his seat and looked down at his hands. "Do you know? I think my ability must still be there. It makes sense. The power of the catalyst must have included some kind of healing benefit to counteract the adverse effects of the mutation… that's why the soldier obtained a power without the side effects. That's what my formula lacked, and why I became a monster."

"Yeah, that definitely makes sense. But it doesn't really matter now, does it?" She sighed. "It's all over. So much potential, stupidly destroyed."

Mohinder squirmed uncomfortably. "Yes," he agreed slowly.

Tracy was busy concentrating on the road, so she didn't notice how Mohinder's hand gently moved upwards on his right thigh to feel the outline of the small secret vial he had managed to fill during Peter and Nathan's fight. The last sample of the formula in the world. Reassured that it was safe, Mohinder rested his elbow on the window-sill and looked alternately at the dark road before them and at Tracy, fiercely luminous in the intermittent light.

Feeling his gaze upon her, Tracy briefly turned her head towards him and winked before facing forward again to merge into a new lane. Once they were hurtling down the HOV lane with no turns or traffic in sight, she took her right hand off the steering wheel and floated it over to Mohinder's lap, where his left hand was resting. She danced her fingers on the back of his hand. After a few seconds, he turned his palm upwards so that he could gently rub her palm with his thumb as she continued to tickle him, now on the fingertips.

The mutual admiration, intimate conversation, cutesy hand games, and expensive leather interior created a warm pool of comfort and serenity in the pit of Mohinder's stomach. But he wasn't completely lulled into complacency. He wanted to believe that there was more to her, a softer side that was more like Niki than she wanted to admit, but Mohinder knew that unless he turned out to be right, this woman would probably throw him under the bus as soon as he had finished with him, but he felt a frisson of excitement knowing that the further up this hill he climbed, the more danger he was putting himself in. Then again, remembering how recently he had had her strapped to a table, she was probably thinking of him as just as potentially dangerous. He didn't know what the future held in store for them, but Mohinder found himself feeling more than ready for his next adventure.


End file.
